A tremendous variety of methods have been proposed and implemented to provide security and anonymity for communications over the Internet. The variety stems, in part, from the different needs of different Internet users. A basic heuristic framework to aid in discussing these different security techniques is illustrated in FIG. 1. Two terminals, an originating terminal 100 and a destination terminal 110 are in communication over the Internet. It is desired for the communications to be secure, that is, immune to eavesdropping. For example, terminal 100 may transmit secret information to terminal 110 over the Internet 107. Also, it may be desired to prevent an eavesdropper from discovering that terminal 100 is in communication with terminal 110. For example, if terminal 100 is a user and terminal 110 hosts a web site, terminal 100""s user may not want anyone in the intervening networks to know what web sites he is xe2x80x9cvisiting.xe2x80x9d Anonymity would thus be an issue, for example, for companies that want to keep their market research interests private and thus would prefer to prevent outsiders from knowing which web-sites or other Internet resources they are xe2x80x9cvisiting.xe2x80x9d These two security issues may be called data security and anonymity, respectively.
Data security is usually tackled using some form of data encryption. An encryption key 48 is known at both the originating and terminating terminals 100 and 110. The keys may be private and public at the originating and destination terminals 100 and 110, respectively or they may be symmetrical keys (the same key is used by both parties to encrypt and decrypt). Many encryption methods are known and usable in this context.
To hide traffic from a local administrator or ISP, a user can employ a local proxy server in communicating over an encrypted channel with an outside proxy such that the local administrator or ISP only sees the encrypted traffic. Proxy servers prevent destination servers from determining the identities of the originating clients. This system employs an intermediate server interposed between client and destination server. The destination server sees only the Internet Protocol (IP) address of the proxy server and not the originating client. The target server only sees the address of the outside proxy. This scheme relies on a trusted outside proxy server. Also, proxy schemes are vulnerable to traffic analysis methods of determining identities of transmitters and receivers. Another important limitation of proxy servers is that the server knows the identities of both calling and called parties. In many instances, an originating terminal, such as terminal A, would prefer to keep its identity concealed from the proxy, for example, if the proxy server is provided by an Internet service provider (ISP).
To defeat traffic analysis, a scheme called Chaum""s mixes employs a proxy server that transmits and receives fixed length messages, including dummy messages. Multiple originating terminals are connected through a mix (a server) to multiple target servers. It is difficult to tell which of the originating terminals are communicating to which of the connected target servers, and the dummy messages confuse eavesdroppers"" efforts to detect communicating pairs by analyzing traffic. A drawback is that there is a risk that the mix server could be compromised. One way to deal with this risk is to spread the trust among multiple mixes. If one mix is compromised, the identities of the originating and target terminals may remain concealed. This strategy requires a number of alternative mixes so that the intermediate servers interposed between the originating and target terminals are not determinable except by compromising more than one mix. The strategy wraps the message with multiple layers of encrypted addresses. The first mix in a sequence can decrypt only the outer layer of the message to reveal the next destination mix in sequence. The second mix can decrypt the message to reveal the next mix and so on. The target server receives the message and, optionally, a multi-layer encrypted payload containing return information to send data back in the same fashion. The only way to defeat such a mix scheme is to collude among mixes. If the packets are all fixed-length and intermixed with dummy packets, there is no way to do any kind of traffic analysis.
Still another anonymity technique, called xe2x80x98crowds,xe2x80x99 protects the identity of the originating terminal from the intermediate proxies by providing that originating terminals belong to groups of proxies called crowds. The crowd proxies are interposed between originating and target terminals. Each proxy through which the message is sent is randomly chosen by an upstream proxy. Each intermediate proxy can send the message either to another randomly chosen proxy in the xe2x80x9ccrowdxe2x80x9d or to the destination. Thus, even crowd members cannot determine if a preceding proxy is the originator of the message or if it was simply passed from another proxy.
ZKS (Zero-Knowledge Systems) Anonymous IP Protocol allows users to select up to any of five different pseudonyms, while desktop software encrypts outgoing traffic and wraps it in User Datagram Protocol (UDP) packets. The first server in a 2+-hop system gets the UDP packets, strips off one layer of encryption to add another, then sends the traffic to the next server, which strips off yet another layer of encryption and adds a new one. The user is permitted to control the number of hops. At the final server, traffic is decrypted with an untraceable IP address. The technique is called onion-routing. This method can be defeated using traffic analysis. For a simple example, bursts of packets from a user during low-duty periods can reveal the identities of sender and receiver.
Firewalls attempt to protect LANs from unauthorized access and hostile exploitation or damage to computers connected to the LAN. Firewalls provide a server through which all access to the LAN must pass. Firewalls are centralized systems that require administrative overhead to maintain. They can be compromised by virtual-machine applications (xe2x80x9cappletsxe2x80x9d). They instill a false sense of security that leads to security breaches for example by users sending sensitive information to servers outside the firewall or encouraging use of modems to sidestep the firewall security. Firewalls are not useful for distributed systems such as business travelers, extranets, small teams, etc.
A secure mechanism for communicating over the internet, including a protocol referred to as the Tunneled Agile Routing Protocol (TARP), uses a unique two-layer encryption format and special TARP routers. TARP routers are similar in function to regular IP routers. Each TARP router has one or more IP addresses and uses normal IP protocol to send IP packet messages (xe2x80x9cpacketsxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cdatagramsxe2x80x9d). The IP packets exchanged between TARP terminals via TARP routers are actually encrypted packets whose true destination address is concealed except to TARP routers and servers. The normal or xe2x80x9cclearxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9coutsidexe2x80x9d IP header attached to TARP IP packets contains only the address of a next hop router or destination server. That is, instead of indicating a final destination in the destination field of the IP header, the TARP packet""s IP header always points to a next-hop in a series of TARP router hops, or to the final destination. This means there is no overt indication from an intercepted TARP packet of the true destination of the TARP packet since the destination could always be next-hop TARP router as well as the final destination.
Each TARP packet""s true destination is concealed behind a layer of encryption generated using a link key. The link key is the encryption key used for encrypted communication between the hops intervening between an originating TARP terminal and a destination TARP terminal. Each TARP router can remove the outer layer of encryption to reveal the destination router for each TARP packet. To identify the link key needed to decrypt the outer layer of encryption of a TARP packet, a receiving TARP or routing terminal may identify the transmitting terminal by the sender/receiver IP numbers in the cleartext IP header.
Once the outer layer of encryption is removed, the TARP router determines the final destination. Each TARP packet 140 undergoes a minimum number of hops to help foil traffic analysis. The hops may be chosen at random or by a fixed value. As a result, each TARP packet may make random trips among a number of geographically disparate routers before reaching its destination. Each trip is highly likely to be different for each packet composing a given message because each trip is independently randomly determined. This feature is called agile routing. The fact that different packets take different routes provides distinct advantages by making it difficult for an interloper to obtain all the packets forming an entire multi-packet message. The associated advantages have to do with the inner layer of encryption discussed below. Agile routing is combined with another feature that furthers this purpose; a feature that ensures that any message is broken into multiple packets.
The IP address of a TARP router can be changed, a feature called IP agility. Each TARP router, independently or under direction from another TARP terminal or router, can change its IP address. A separate, unchangeable identifier or address is also defined. This address, called the TARP address, is known only to TARP routers and terminals and may be correlated at any time by a TARP router or a TARP terminal using a Lookup Table (LUT). When a TARP router or terminal changes its IP address, it updates the other TARP routers and terminals which in turn update their respective LUTs.
The message payload is hidden behind an inner layer of encryption in the TARP packet that can only be unlocked using a session key. The session key is not available to any of the intervening TARP routers. The session key is used to decrypt the payloads of the TARP packets permitting the data stream to be reconstructed.
Communication may be made private using link and session keys, which in turn may be shared and used according to any desired method. For example, public/private keys or symmetric keys may be used.
To transmit a data stream, a TARP originating terminal constructs a series of TARP packets from a series of IP packets generated by a network (IP) layer process. (Note that the terms xe2x80x9cnetwork layer,xe2x80x9d xe2x80x9cdata link layer,xe2x80x9d xe2x80x9capplication layer,xe2x80x9d etc. used in this specification correspond to the Open Systems Intercomection (OSI) network terminology.) The payloads of these packets are assembled into a block and chain-block encrypted using the session key. This assumes, of course, that all the IP packets are destined for the same TARP terminal. The block is then interleaved and the interleaved encrypted block is broken into a series of payloads, one for each TARP packet to be generated. Special TARP headers IPT are then added to each payload using the IP headers from the data stream packets. The TARP headers can be identical to normal IP headers or customized in some way. They should contain a formula or data for deinterleaving the data at the destination TARP terminal, a time-to-live (TTL) parameter to indicate the number of hops still to be executed, a data type identifier which indicates whether the payload contains, for example, TCP or UDP data, the sender""s TARP address, the destination TARP address, and an indicator as to whether the packet contains real or decoy data or a formula for filtering out decoy data if decoy data is spread in some way through the TARP payload data.
Note that although chain-block encryption is discussed here with reference to the session key, any encryption method may be used. Preferably, as in chain block encryption, a method should be used that makes unauthorized decryption difficult without an entire result of the encryption process. Thus, by separating the encrypted block among multiple packets and making it difficult for an interloper to obtain access to all of such packets, the contents of the communications are provided an extra layer of security.
Decoy or dummy data can be added to a stream to help foil traffic analysis by reducing the peak-to-average network load. It may be desirable to provide the TARP process with an ability to respond to the time of day or other criteria to generate more decoy data during low traffic periods so that communication bursts at one point in the Internet cannot be tied to communication bursts at another point to reveal the communicating endpoints.
Dummy data also helps to break the data into a larger number of inconspicuously-sized packets permitting the interleave window size to be increased while maintaining a reasonable size for each packet. (The packet size can be a single standard size or selected from a fixed range of sizes.) One primary reason for desiring for each message to be broken into multiple packets is apparent if a chain block encryption scheme is used to form the first encryption layer prior to interleaving. A single block encryption may be applied to portion, or entirety, of a message, and that portion or entirety then interleaved into a number of separate packets. Considering the agile IP routing of the packets, and the attendant difficulty of reconstructing an entire sequence of packets to form a single block-encrypted message element, decoy packets can significantly increase the difficulty of reconstructing an entire data stream.
The above scheme may be implemented entirely by processes operating between the data link layer and the network layer of each server or terminal participating in the TARP system. Because the encryption system described above is insertable between the data link and network layers, the processes involved in supporting the encrypted communication may be completely transparent to processes at the IP (network) layer and above. The TARP processes may also be completely transparent to the data link layer processes as well. Thus, no operations at or above the Network layer, or at or below the data link layer, are affected by the insertion of the TARP stack. This provides additional security to all processes at or above the network layer, since the difficulty of unauthorized penetration of the network layer (by, for example, a hacker) is increased substantially. Even newly developed servers running at the session layer leave all processes below the session layer vulnerable to attack. Note that in this architecture, security is distributed. That is, notebook computers used by executives on the road, for example, can communicate over the Internet without any compromise in security.
IP address changes made by TARP terminals and routers can be done at regular intervals, at random intervals, or upon detection of xe2x80x9cattacks.xe2x80x9d The variation of IP addresses hinders traffic analysis that might reveal which computers are communicating, and also provides a degree of immunity from attack. The level of immunity from attack is roughly proportional to the rate at which the IP address of the host is changing.
As mentioned, IP addresses may be changed in response to attacks. An attack may be revealed, for example, by a regular series of messages indicating that a router is being probed in some way. Upon detection of an attack, the TARP layer process may respond to this event by changing its IP address. In addition, it may create a subprocess that maintains the original IP address and continues interacting with the attacker in some manner.
Decoy packets may be generated by each TARP terminal on some basis determined by an algorithm. For example, the algorithm may be a random one which calls for the generation of a packet on a random basis when the terminal is idle. Alternatively, the algorithm may be responsive to time of day or detection of low traffic to generate more decoy packets during low traffic times. Note that packets are preferably generated in groups, rather than one by one, the groups being sized to simulate real messages. In addition, so that decoy packets may be inserted in normal TARP message streams, the background loop may have a latch that makes it more likely to insert decoy packets when a message stream is being received. Alternatively, if a large number of decoy packets is received along with regular TARP packets, the algorithm may increase the rate of dropping of decoy packets rather than forwarding them. The result of dropping and generating decoy packets in this way is to make the apparent incoming message size different from the apparent outgoing message size to help foil traffic analysis.
In various other embodiments of the invention, a scalable version of the system may be constructed in which a plurality of IP addresses are preassigned to each pair of communicating nodes in the network. Each pair of nodes agrees upon an algorithm for xe2x80x9choppingxe2x80x9d between IP addresses (both sending and receiving), such that an eavesdropper sees apparently continuously random IP address pairs (source and destination) for packets transmitted between the pair. Overlapping or xe2x80x9creusablexe2x80x9d IP addresses may be allocated to different users on the same subnet, since each node merely verifies that a particular packet includes a valid source/destination pair from the agreed-upon algorithm. Source/destination pairs are preferably not reused between any two nodes during any given end-to-end session, though limited IP block sizes or lengthy sessions might require it.
Further improvements described in this continuation-in-part application include: (1) a load balancer that distributes packets across different transmission paths according to transmission path quality; (2) a DNS proxy server that transparently creates a virtual private network in response to a domain name inquiry; (3) a large-to-small link bandwidth management feature that prevents denial-of-service attacks at system chokepoints; (4) a traffic limiter that regulates incoming packets by limiting the rate at which a transmitter can be synchronized with a receiver; and (5) a signaling synchronizer that allows a large number of nodes to communicate with a central node by partitioning the communication function between two separate entities